Getting a taste of sherry's native flavors

WINE

By Peter Liem

Published 4:15 pm, Friday, October 19, 2012

To those initiated into its charms, fino sherry evokes images of a youthful, easy-drinking wine - pale in color and relatively light in body, something with an easy bit of tapas. This is even truer for manzanilla, a close sibling of fino made in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, a town in the Cádiz province in southern Spain.

Yet when visiting the Jerez region, where sherry is made, and tasting these same wines from barrel, they tend to exhibit markedly different characters than they do once bottled and shipped overseas.

Their color is more pronounced, their aromas noticeably pungent. They taste like the truly complex wines they are.

For one, the wine receives heavy filtration before bottling, which not only clarifies it but also diminishes its color and aroma. This has been the custom in Jerez for the past several decades.

Yet several examples of en rama, a lightly filtered style of sherry, have arrived on these shores within the past year. They offer a window into the true taste of sherry from the cask, which most consumers have never experienced.

En rama "has more complexity, fills the mouth with a lot of flavor, and it's very long and powerful," says Montse Molina, the winemaker at Barbadillo, who bottles a small quantity of Manzanilla en Rama each season.

Despite their reputations, both fino and manzanilla undergo considerable aging in barrel. Until recently, both were required to spend a minimum of three years, now reduced to two; in practice, however, most of the best examples spend anywhere between four and seven years in barrel, an unusually lengthy period for a white wine.

This helps the wines increase in body and acquire greater depth and complexity. In cask, longer-aged finos and manzanillas typically demonstrate rich, greenish-golden hues, as well as intense, mature aromas.

The point of filtration

Filtration is a basic and fundamental element of winemaking, practiced in all wine regions of the world - although in modern times it has been viewed negatively by some critics, which has led many consumers to view unfiltered wine as superior.

However, filtration in itself isn't a bad thing. It can play an important role in removing unwanted solids and other particles, including yeasts and bacteria that can cause a wine to be unstable. It simply must be wielded judiciously.

In the case of fino and manzanilla, filtration is necessary because of the flor, a layer of yeasts that lies on top of the wine and contributes to its inimitable character. These wines are under flor during the entire time that they spend in barrel. Upon bottling, it's necessary to filter them to prevent any flor from entering the bottle, where it could bloom again.

It wasn't always this way. In the past, fino and manzanilla were more robust, released at a higher average age and fortified to a higher percentage of alcohol. But beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, consumers trended toward younger, lighter-bodied wines.

In response, sherry producers altered their finos and manzanillas - not only bottling younger wines and lowering the alcohol, but also employing heavy fining and filtration, often with the use of activated carbon. This removed some color and aroma, and eventually created an image of fino and manzanilla as pale, light wines.

So how much filtration is necessary? The debate about that has led to a chance to taste sherry that's much closer to its original state.

The filtered Hidalgo-La Gitana Manzanilla, for instance, is an archetype of the modern style, showing a lithe, supple tension and briny undertones. Hidalgo-La Gitana Manzanilla en Rama, a version that sees minimal filtration, is an entirely different wine. Its iodine-like aspect is still present, but here it's more intensely pronounced, imparting a savory, umami-driven complexity; the wine is also richer in body, with a pronounced color and ample aroma.

Most producers of en rama sherries employ a gentle filtration, simply to remove solid particles. Hidalgo-La Gitana Manzanilla en Rama, for instance, passes through a filter of 3 microns, and sees no further fining or cold stabilization, techniques that can further remove particles. Tío Pepe en Rama, a version of its beloved fino that González Byass first launched in 2010, follows a similar procedure. This is enough to keep the wine stable for transport, although it is still more fragile than heavily filtered versions.

"After three months, the character will change," says Antonio Flores, González Byass' winemaker.

Among sherry aficionados, it's often believed that en rama means the wine is unfiltered. This is rarely the case, if it ever happens at all. Barbadillo, an early pioneer of the style, initially attempted to bottle its manzanilla directly from cask, without any filtration, when the house first launched its Manzanilla en Rama in 1999. Unfortunately, the wine tended to be unstable in bottle because of its flor. Today it receives egg-white fining and a light filtration.

Passing pleasures?

Even with the filtration, these are typically viewed as passing pleasures. Both González Byass and Hidalgo-La Gitana advise that their wines should be drunk as soon as possible after bottling to preserve their characters.

Jesús Barquín of Equipo Navazos, on the other hand, is unconcerned about the wine developing in bottle; in fact, he believes they can improve with bottle age. His La Bota de Manzanilla and La Bota de Fino are bottled with minimal filtration, although they are not labeled as en rama; their younger and more accessible sibling, I Think, features en rama on the label. All are marked with bottling dates - not to warn buyers but to encourage consumers to compare various editions over time.

In the near future, we're likely to see more examples of minimally filtered sherry. But should all sherries be bottled en rama? Purists might argue that it's a better expression of the wine's character. But because the wines require more careful handling, it may not be entirely practical for the industry.

In addition, consumers accustomed to lighter styles of sherry may not necessarily be attracted to en rama's assertive, intense personalities. That difference in character is less a matter of criticizing filtered wines than it is becoming aware of further possibilities.

But en rama allows lighter sherries to show all of their potential character and complexity. For those attuned to the experience, who want to explore sherry's depths, this can be a revelation.

Peter Liem is founder of Champagneguide.net and co-author, with Jesús Barquín, of the new book "Sherry, Manzanilla and Montilla," out this month. E-mail: wine@sfchronicle.com

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